Monday, January 21, 2013

Hey Everyone! It's that time again! It's been a good week out here in Ushiku. But it has ben COLD the last few days. Ok, I take that back. It's really not that cold. But the wind is really cold, and it's been blowing really hard the last few days. Just as an update about the snow from last Monday, it's all mostly melted already. There's still a little bit here and there, but not much. Most of it got cleared from off the sidewalks and roads by tuesday afternoon. However, there was snow on the ground all day Monday, and that includes when we went out from the apartment in the evening to do some contacting. What we learned from this experience is that riding your bike in four inches of snow is rather tricky, especially when you have road tires.

Best picture I could get of the taxi snowball fight.

But yeah, that's that. Tuesday we saw something that was pretty funny. Elder Christensen and I were out at one of the train stations, and it was really slow. not many people were around. There were about half a dozen taxis of so that were waiting for customers, and they had all been sitting there for quite some time and were getting bored. Then, to our surprise, these two taxi drivers get out of their taxis, grab some snow from off the hedges, and start throwing snowballs at each other. Then, some of the snow would get on the taxi, they would freak out, grab a rag, and buff it off. The best part was when one of them completely missed and ended up hitting a taxi belonging to a driver that wasn't even involved in the snowball fight. Probably one of the most funny things I've seen in quite some time.

On Wednesday, we had our weekly English class. This lady shows up who I haven't met before, but apparently she's been coming for the last several months. She then starts telling Elder Christensen that on the first Wednesday of the year she had come to class, but the church was all locked up and nobody was there. What had happened is English class had been cancelled that night because of new years, and too many students said they weren't going to come anyway. I guess this lady had missed the memo somehow. She wasn't very happy though, because she waited outside (where it was quite cold) for quite some time, and apparently she tried calling us. After we got that all sorted out, as a joke she told Elder Christensen that to make it up he would just have to treat her to dinner sometime. Then, Elder Christensen said that instead he would make a cake for her and bring it next week. Well, she decided that she's going to hold him to it. Now, Elder Christensen is faced with a choice: cake or death.

Funny note I found on the map of the area in the apartment.

Thursday I got to meet Kada for the first time. He's a single guy in his 30's who was baptized quite some time ago, but hasn't been to church in a long time because of work. We have a weekly lesson with him on Thursdays, but for various reasons it's been cancelled the last couple of weeks, which is why I haven't met him until now. He's a pretty interesting guy though. When I found out he wasn't married, I asked if he had a girlfriend. He said he did, and pulls out his phone to show me a picture. It was a picture of his cat... He's a really fun guy, he's just really weird too, and he's really lonely. And he talks really fast. I thought my Japanese was finally getting somewhere, and then I try to talk to this guy and it just hurts. I'm looking forward to continuing to meet with him though. It'll be fun.

That's about it for this week. There really hasn't been a whole lot going on. Due to our current lack of investigators, we've been spending alot of time trying to find people who are interested. I think that part of it might be the weather. It's cold, and Japanese people hate the cold, so most people we talk to on the street are grumpy. But we have been able to find a few people with some potential. We're going to try meeting with them this week, so we'll see how that goes.